Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

On the opposite of the spectrum:

From a set of year 2000 USPS experiments:

> Helium balloon. The balloon was attached to a weight. The address was written on the balloon with magic marker; no postage was affixed. Our operative argued strongly that he should be charged a negative postage and refunded the postal fees, because the transport airplane would actually be lighter as a result of our postal item. This line of reasoning merely received a laugh from the clerk. The balloon was refused; reasons given: transportation of helium, not wrapped.

https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/TMP-1...

Image links are dead, including on archive.org :(

View on HN

I remembered and searched for the same article. I found this version (on the same domain) with images and better formatting.

https://improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-july-au...

https://time.com/archive/6712646/shipping-the-cement-is-in-t...

TIME

July 4, 1988 12:00 AM EDT

What is the cheapest way to get 6,000 concrete blocks and 4,600 bags of cement to a remote Eskimo village? Answer: mail them. Sam Krogstad, a construction supplier in Anchorage, is sending the individually addressed blocks (postage: $4.33 each) and bags ($4.27) about 700 miles north to Wainwright, where they will be used to build a small harbor on the Arctic Ocean. Krogstad’s bill for stamps will be about $45,000, less than what other shippers would charge.

The Postal Service is not pleased about the shipment, which will cost about $180,000 to deliver by truck and plane. But the agency can find nothing illegal about Krogstad’s parcels, which weigh a few pounds less than the 70- lb. maximum for regular mail.

Mr. Krogstad forgot to check international mailing regulations just as asiduously.

We could have had our own homegrown Temu, in America.

I moved to Juneau mostly via USPS. It was fairly inexpensive.

It helped a bit that my apartment was directly above the Auke Bay PO.

Now you know the reason why courier services often include both weight and volume in their pricing calculations.

And for freight... density, stackability, and durability.

I would like to understand how this works. Did they hand off the to-be-mailed uwrapped, say, lemon or a hammer or a deer tibia to a person at a post office? Wouldn't the post office clerks just say "sorry you gotta box that, we sell one of these here options"?

The article has lots of info about what clerks said and did at delivery, but little about when they were sent, which suggests to me that there's something about how USPS works that different from how it works where I live that's assumed to be obvious to the reader. You can't just drop a deer bone or a lemon in a mailbox right? It wouldn't fit, would it?

From the link: > mailed at public postal collection boxes (when possible to cram the object through the aperture) or at postal stations (if possible).

In the US, post offices generally have drop boxes outside for letters (since you normally just need a stamp), and a larger drop box for packages inside, since you can often get pre-paid labels for stuff like item returns.

Thanks!

> Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection. After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as he worked his route.

I'm pretty sure that's a very serious crime, given all the strict laws about mail.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com